McCollum, Muslims to discuss controversial film

Attorney General Bill McCollum and Muslim leaders will meet today to address concerns that McCollum showed the controversial film Obsession to his staff during work hours in state buildings.

Through an assistant, McCollum sent an e-mail to his 500 employees in January, urging them to attend one of three screenings of the film in order to understand "the terrorist threat to Florida and the West by radical Islam." Employees taped up posters of the crescent moon and star of Islam imposed over the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

Muslim leaders from the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles and the Council of American Islamic Relations describe the film as an "anti-Muslim propaganda film."

"We are gravely alarmed that a respectable, high-level official such as yourself would be promoting such inflammatory anti-Muslim propaganda through your office, " wrote MPAC executive director Salam Al Marayati on Jan. 23. "The office that hate crime victims turn to for legal aid and justice is itself igniting the fire of bias and fear through such events." (full story here)

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